Gravestone Bouquet
by Mango Marbles
Summary: When you're forced to remember someone you love through a slab of marble with words forced onto its once smooth surface, it can be hard to find strength and believe that you have anything worth fighting for. Pre-RE5 one-shot.


When he visited, he tried to keep it simple. That's what she would have wanted: an optional bouquet of flowers and a salute.

Chris had been her partner and friend for about a decade—and was involuntarily the reason for her current state—but he still didn't know her favorite flower. It was just one of the things that never came up between them. It was just one of the small things that renewed the pain more than he thought it would, more than any physical blow could.

The bouquet didn't feel right in his grip, which he continually re-adjusted as he walked through the cemetery's path, past other visitors who always kept their gaze down or at the passing gravestones. Some people had tears streaming down their cheeks like little salty rivers and others, like Chris, kept a blank expression. Sometimes too many emotions fought in his heart and cancelled each other out and he was left with nothing. This was one of those times. The sadness of his lose, the anger at his role, the hatred towards his former captain, they all meshed and become a blur of emotion crashing through him like she crashed through glass.

Chris stopped in front of a grave in one corner of the cemetery, under a tall oak tree beginning to shed its leaves. "Hey, Jill," he said.

He paused, but he knew that he wouldn't receive an answer from the cold stone whose only connection to her was through bearing her name engraved on its smooth surface.

In ever loving memory

B.S.A.A.

Jill Valentine

1974-2006

He knelt in front of the stone and read the words to himself. They would never be enough, he knew, to express who Jill was. It was just another thing words couldn't do.

Placing the bouquet down in front of the stone like an offering, to deities he continued to lose faith in, he spoke again. "I brought you some flowers," he said, "but I still don't know which are your favorites. The florist put it together for me. She said they each hold a meaning, but I had other things on my mind and don't really remember. Sorry about that."

It wasn't ugly—at least, he didn't find it to be. The purple flowers balanced out the white ones. It wasn't too bright and it wasn't too dark.

He could almost hear her laugh. _"Who would've thought you'd give me flowers one day, Redfield? Half of the RPD probably put bets down for this."_

But with the exception of a faint susurrus carried by the wind and the footsteps of others living among the dead, it was silent.

Usually it was the silence that kept him talking. Only in the cemetery did it bother him when it was quiet. "There's so much I wish I could tell you, Jill." He traced her name with the pad of a thick finger, skin rougher than the stone it caressed. "And not to this damn stone, to you in person."

"I'll be leaving for another mission tomorrow," he said, ceasing his idle tracing after a moment too long. "It's not far away, but each lead makes me feel like I'm getting closer to finding you again." _And Wesker._ "I know that you're still out there. They can declare you dead all they want, but without a body, they can't prove it. And I know Wesker will still be alive until I see his lifeless body with my own eyes." He found he voice rising with his anger as he spoke and took a deep breath to calm himself.

He sat beside her gravestone and lit a cigarette. Exhaling smoke from his lips, he ran a hand down his face like it could bring back all the sleep he'd lost since he lost her. "I'd offer you a cigarette," he said, taking another drag from his. "But last time, that didn't go so well."

The memory almost brought a smile to his lips.

_Their mission became stressful when hostages became involved. It was the stress that led him outside of the RPD, onto the steps of its main entrance, and put the cigarette in his hand. If the smoke wasn't so opaque, it might have been able to pass for warm breath materializing in the chilled autumn air._

_With all the 'what ifs' pouring through his mind, he didn't notice her presence until she tapped his shoulder. He turned to see little rookie, Jill Valentine, looking up at him with large steel blue eyes. "Hey," she said._

"_Hey," he responded._

"_Can I have one?"_

"_One what?"_

"_Cigarette."_

_He took his pack from his pocket and opened it. One left. A stressful mission and long day still left, an entire pack wouldn't be enough to calm his nerves, but he looked at her again and knew he couldn't refuse her. "Here," he said, handing it to her._

_She took the cigarette between her middle and forefinger and Chris couldn't help but think it just belonged there. Chris lit it for her and she thanked him with a smile, but he didn't need her gratitude. They were partners now, Wesker said. Best start bonding somehow._

_Chris turned his attention back to the street in front of the station. Busy, as always. Strange how a city so small had so many citizens and passersby. Sounds of tires against asphalt and honking horns became almost peaceful when he was used to hearing gunfire and commands yelled._

_But he wasn't used to hearing violent coughing from beside him. He turned to see Jill doubled over in a coughing fit, cigarette fallen to the ground. Clapping her on the back with one large hand, he asked, "Hey, you okay, Jill?"_

_She shoved his hand away with a half-hearted glare, only straightening up when her coughs mostly subsided. "I'm fine."_

_She stubbed out the cigarette with the toes of her boot._

"_You're not a smoker, are you?"_

"_No, especially not after this," she said. "Thought I'd at least try it."_

"_You owe me a new pack," he said. "That was my last one."_

_He noticed half of his still burning cigarette missing already, painfully aware of how much begging his body would be doing for these sweet sticks of addiction and death before his shift ended._

"_Yeah, yeah," she said, rolling her eyes. "I'll buy you a pack tonight and give it to you tomorrow."_

"_Tomorrow?" He shook his head. "No, I'm following your car to the store and you're giving them to me tonight or I won't make it to tomorrow."_

_She shrugged. "Whatever works." _

He stood on legs as stiff as the stones lining the paths of the cemetery, stubbing out his cigarette with the toes of his boots just like Jill all those years ago. Standing at attention, he raised one hand to salute Jill before turning back down the path he came from.

"Sorry, but I'm going to need to ask one last favor from you, Jill," he said. "Just hold on until I can get there. I'll find you, Jill. I promise."

It was a normal part of the grieving process. They called it 'denial'. Said he was refusing to accept the facts. He said the same thing to them. They denied the fact her body wasn't found. They refused to accept that nothing is as simple as missing bodies when Albert Wesker was involved.

Leaves were starting to fall of the trees and crunched underfoot, sounding more like shards of glass than crisp reminders of inevitable winter. Chris stuffed his hands in his pockets when the slight bite of chilled air crossed the line to annoying on his bare skin. The way his breath materialized on the air made him long for another cigarette, but he made a promise to himself to try to quit for Jill. If she had to give up everything for him, then he would return the favor and give up a luxury of his own.

He was down to only one pack per week now, compared to the one pack per day he'd inhaled following her death.

He drove home on autopilot, having been to the cemetery and back so many times since last year, when her gravestone was placed and she was declared dead. Autopilot took over most of his life now and he barely realized he was alive, never even remembered entering his apartment and falling onto his bed.

With the cover of night as his blanket, he fell into nightmares that dragged him from his apartment back to Spencer's mansion. Images of Jill's battered, lifeless body were forced into his mind and brought with them the doubts he tried to banish. What if she didn't make it? What if Wesker just wanted him to hope and removed evidence of her death or wanted to prevent Jill from finding peace in death by making her just another infected creature?

It was these thoughts that kept him awake after his nightmare took its toll like always. He never let himself feel sorry for himself because when someone you loved was in the grasp of your biggest enemy, nothing you felt could compare to the torture they were surely put through.

Another thought he tried to banish. One that made him hope Jill really had died and was at peace.

Dead or alive, he would find her and bring her home. If only to give her the proper burial she deserved.

Only then did his numbness fade into a single emotion: despair. The sting behind his eyes from unshed tears presented itself. Only in the darkness of his apartment did he let himself break.

Because being strong was hard when the source of your strength was taken from you, thrown out of a window and down a cliff.

Being strong was hard when the world depended on you, but the world you depended on was torn away and you were the reason why.

Being strong was hard when you added a grey marble flower with a pretty little etching of a name to your gravestone bouquet in a pitiful attempt to fill the void in your heart where lives that made yours worth living once resided.

When morning came, the stoic Chris Redfield left for another mission with the renewed determination that always followed his restless nights. Because he would find her alive and bring her back home. This was not denial and he was not grieving her death.

This was determination and he was grieving the time separating their meetings.

"Wait for me, Jill."

* * *

><p>AN: This is my first dabble into Resident Evil fanfiction, so I hope you enjoyed it. Please leave a review and thank you for reading.


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